Control Ends with a Twist
by Bumpkin
Summary: What if Max had not left Kal hating him? How could he have helped?


The car screeched to a halt in front of the luxurious mansion. Max jumped out of the driver's side door and ran around the front of the vehicle to the passenger door. He opened it and grabbed Kal's arm, throwing it around his neck. Max wrapped his arm around Kal's waist and pulled the other being out of the car. Max was staggering under Kal's weight but they managed to make the short distance to the steps like a pair of drunken sots leaning on each other to stay upright after a wild night on the town. When they reached the steps, Max could not support the weight of the other anymore and they both tumbled down into an ignominous heap.  
  
"Langely?" Max's voice was slightly breathless as he said the other's name. He had knelt down next to Kal and now he placed his hand on the other man's shoulder. Max lifted his hand when Kal Langley turned his face slightly to look at Max out of the corner of his eye.   
  
Langley's voice was tired and hoarse when he spoke without looking at Max, his demeanor was that of a broken man.   
  
"I destroyed my life for you tonight." He drew in a shuddering breath while Max just helplessly looked on. Bitterness coated the shapeshifter's words as he continued, "All for nothing." Langley levered himself to one arm on the steps and looked up at Max. "Because of you, everything that I've worked for is gone."  
  
Max spoke, his tone apologetic, "Kal..."  
  
Langley waved him off. "It's how you've always been, *Your Majesty*. Selfish and ungrateful. Being your protector might be encoded into my genes, but after tonight..." Langley began haltingly to rise as he spoke, vitriol dripping from his words. "I'll *never* stop hating you."  
  
Max followed as Kal made his way to his front door. "Kal..." Max paused as he tried to sort out what he wanted to say but then giving up on dignity he continued in a passionate rush. "You were right. *I* slept with the enemy, then sent my child back with her. It was the biggest mistake of my life, and I have to live with that every single day." Max's voice was strained as he held back tears. Kal started up the stairs and Max raised his voice to call after him. "It's my fault!"   
  
Langley paused on the stairs, both hands gripping the rail, his shoulder's slumping as he listened to Max.   
  
"I shouldn't have dragged you into this -- but I didn't have anything to -- I-I didn't know what to do. I-I'm sorry..." Max dropped his eyes, he did not feel that he could look anyone in the face, least of all Kal after what he had put him through in the past twenty four hours.   
  
The other man did not look at Max, he just began to speak as he laboured up the stairs. Kal's voice was rough with his exhaustion. "Think of all the loved ones that you almost left behind -- your sister -- girlfriend." Taking a step with each person named. Then he turned to face Max and said with more strength, "Your mother, who feels like she's already lost you."  
  
Max's head had snapped up when Kal had begun listing off his loved ones, asked with narrowed eyes, "How do you know about them?"  
  
Kal had hung his head again after mentioning how Max's mother felt, raised it again and looked back at his King and said with simplicity and irony, "It's my job." He sighed. "Go home Max. Don't come back." He turned his back on Max as he started on his way up the stairs again, "Word of advice -- The more you embrace our alien side, the more you are going to lose." Max dropped his gaze again in thought.  
  
Max walked away defeated, nothing had gone the way that he had hoped. His mind was flooded with images from the past. His having sex with Tess, even though he had not really been drawn to her in that way, and how since that moment he had done nothing but hurt those that he was surrounded by.   
  
He had lain with the enemy, given her his seed, then he had allowed her to leave with his unborn child. He had been speaking from his heart when he had told Kal that it was the biggest mistake of his life. But, what he hadn't thought about, was that his mission to fix that one huge and colossal mistake was just making him make even more mistakes while he was driven to fix it.  
  
He had hurt Liz by getting her involved with the whole convenience store/ government storage facility fiasco, and then he had compounded that error with refusing to tell his father something, anything if not the truth, after all his help in getting the charges dropped that were leveled against Liz and himself.  
  
Liz's parents were wondering why they had ever trusted him. They were also placing all the blame on his shoulders and frankly, Max could not disagree with them. He had been the one to find the ship and he had given Liz the gun. And you just had to look at how he had been treating Liz lately, as someone to help him get from point A to point B, not as a person in their own right. He did not really deserve her love.  
  
Now he had left her behind while he had taken off to Hollywood on another facet of his quest to save his son. In his fervor to right the wrong that he had done to his unborn child, he had destroyed the life of another being. No matter how much he had wronged his unborn son by giving him life with Tess as his mother, it still did not give him the right to railroad over another's wishes. By ignoring those wishes, Max had destroyed the other being's chances of any kind of happiness for a long time.  
  
Kal had told Max that it had taken him 30 years staying in the same shape to smell chlorine, and few more years to taste lemons and tabasco. Max had mocked Kal and accused him of having *human envy*. But how many times had Max himself wished to be human? How many times had he wished that he had nothing to hide? How could he have mocked another for sharing a desire that he himself had, and Max was a well mixed cocktail of human and Antarian DNA?  
  
Max thought back to what he had felt like when he and Isabel had just emerged from the pods that had incubated them. He had not been able to feel, or smell, or taste much. Sight and hearing had been the flip side, everything had been too loud and too bright. Life had not been fun. Gradually all his senses had moderated, sight and hearing had dulled in their acuity and the other three had grown, but while they had been so out of balance it had been a very bad time.  
  
By forcing Kal to shift his shape in order to be his pilot on his ill conceived quest he had consigned Kal into a prison of his lack of senses. All that the shapeshifter had gained over time had been lost in the instant that Kal had shifted his shape. All because Max could not see anything other than his personal goals.   
  
His son, sister and best friend as well as Liz and Kal, the list went on. His father and mother, everyone that was close to him seemed to get hurt or lose out when they got involved with him.  
  
Depression and guilt flooded over Max in waves. Bitterly he thought to himself that Kal was more human in many ways than he was. At the very least he was more deserving of his humanity...the thought brought Max up short. More deserving of his humanity -- Liz -- Max flashed back to when he had healed Liz when she had been shot. He had had to know how the human body worked in order to do that. He could *heal* the deficiencies in Kal so that he could enjoy the rest of his life on Earth!  
  
Max backtracked his steps. He ran back into the mansion with barely a hitch in stride to molecularly deal with the front door lock. He ran up the stairs calling out, "Kal! Kal, listen... I know that you don't like me and that you have no reason at all to trust me anymore but I had an idea that might be able to help you."  
  
At the end of the long hallway of the mansion Max heard Kal yell out to him, "Max, I told you before, just go away!" Max burst into the master bedroom and held up his hands as Kal surged up in bed, his hands braced to blast Max back into the hallway.  
  
"Listen, I know that you hardly have any reason to tolerate my presence anymore and honestly I will go if you tell me to, but I have an idea that might help you. I am a healer. I could use my own body as a template to *heal* your senses."  
  
Kal subsided back into his bedding, relaxing his threatening posture, but still keeping a wary eye on his youthfully reincarnated ruler. Max could feel the weight of the stare that Kal had on him, he knew that Kal was trying to figure out what it was that Max was after this time. Max knew that he could take the choice right out of Kal's hands by ordering Kal to do it, but that was not the point of the exercise. This was something that Kal had to agree to freely, Max was not going to make any more orders, not to anyone, unless it was for the safety of many over that of a few.  
  
"You said it yourself, that when you don't shapeshift, you give the body organs a chance to mature. What I plan on doing is maturing them to near perfect human levels if I can. But I am not going to order you to do it. It has to be your choice."  
  
Kal's eyes were like windows at dawn when the leap of hope sprang to life in them. But he remained wary.  
  
"Listen, you said earlier that I was the same man that you knew before, selfish and ungrateful. But I was never like that here, its only been recently that I had changed. After everything with Tess, and my unborn son." Max's breath flowed out in a gusty sigh. He looked away from Kal, not wanting to see the scorn and disbelief in the other man's eyes.  
  
"Max, I think that I would like to have to do what you can." Kal was scared, it was clear in his voice, he was afraid to hope in case Max could not do it.  
  
Max did not waste any more time with talking, locking eyes with Kal he placed one hand over the man's chest where the heart would be as well as placing his other hand over his own heart. He could feel the fast beating of his heart slow as he concentrated.  
  
**Flash**  
  
Panic reigned in the small metal room that he was in, the alarms blaring were cutting through his head. Emergency lighting flickered eerily, making the familiar strange. Shrieking over his self preservation instincts was the need to make sure that the pods of the genetically engineered royalty were safe. That they were sealed into their crash webbing. Knowing that they are going to be fine but that precious time had been wasted in the securing of their safety, knowing that he would probably die seeing to their safety but not being able to do anything about it due to the encoding in his genes. Feeling a towering resentment for the embryos. Then the shuddering of impact and the shrill sounds of tearing metal, followed quickly by oblivion.  
  
**Flash**  
  
Hiding in the bushes as the humans swarmed the site of the crash, watching as they took away all eight of the gengineered pods. Following at a distance to the army base where they took them to and killing the humans that tried to keep them from reclaiming their own. Seeing Hal Carver back away and leading away the others. Having a respect for a human burst into life. Taking on the shape of one of the officers that he killed back at the base and getting a job to support himself while he waited for the pods to hatch.  
  
**Flash**  
  
Gaining success in his human life, becoming a famous movie producer, never shifting his shape. Watching in his mind as the pods hatched and making plans to go and get the young children but not getting there before social services had them all in custody. Keeping yet an eye on them from afar as they grew. Beginning to feel the dulling of his alien senses as they got older, sharpening of others of his human shape, which made the loss more than survivable.  
  
**Flash**  
  
A blinding surge of power as the Granolith powered up and rocketed out of the Earth's atmosphere, faster than any Earthly radar could detect. The relief that his job was over, that he was allowed to stay on Earth. Then a few days later the crushing disappointment as he sensed three of the royal four still on Earth.  
  
**Flash**  
  
Trying to warn Max off of going home. The inner raging as he was forced by simply spoken words to do as he was bid, the invisible shackles tightening and chafing more than ever before, after the long freedom. Lowering himself from his lofty position of power in the Earthly world to begging his adolescent King not to make him shift his shape, knowing when he did that all his human gains would be lost. Knowing that it was all going to be for nothing, the ship was useless. The searing physical pain of shifting his shape twice in close succession, the mental pain of knowing what he had lost in an instant.  
  
**Flash**  
  
Daring to speak his mind, telling Max that he was going to hate him for the rest of his life. The feeling of defeat as he made his way up the stairs of his sumptuous mansion. The slight thrill of making Max ill at ease with how much he knew, followed quickly by apathy. Knowing that he was not going to be able to smell, or taste, or touch anything for another fifty years, and not knowing if he had another fifty years to live.  
  
**Flash**  
  
Hope. Fear. Pain -- Joy! Smelling the musky combination of Max's sweat and aftershave, feeling his stomach rumble in hunger, tasting the old socks flavour of his dry mouth. His now perfectly formed human heart pumping in time with Max's.  
  
**Flash**  
  
Kal opened his eyes as his laboured breathing fell out of sync with Max's. Max was clearly exhausted, his face was flushed and shiny with perspiration and veins were standing out from beneath the skin of his face and neck. Max sat back on his heels bracing his back against the wall. His eyes were closed and he had his head tilted back and resting against the wall, he was gulping in huge breaths of air.  
  
"That is the closest I could get Kal, but it *should* be better than you had before." Max had spoken without opening his eyes but now he did and he looked full into Kal's eyes. "I know that it does not make up for what you have had to go through all this time -- but I hope that you can enjoy it." He smiled tiredly.  
  
Kal could not answer, he was incoherant with joy. He swung his legs to get out of bed and he coudl actually feel the difference in temperature of the sheets from where he had been lying to where the sheets had been exposed to air. *He could actually feel it!* He could smell the fabric softener that his laundry service used. His mouth was watering madly as he thought of eating some of the ice cream in his freezer. It was sensory overload -- and he loved it!  
  
He felt like he had not lived before this moment, he had only been existing. Max, his king, had repaid his long service in a way that Kal had never dreamed was possible. He sat down next to Max on the carpet and laid his hand over his heart, thrilling again in the way that it beat in a perfect sinus rythym under his hand and said, "Max -- It's more than I had before by a thousandfold. I don't think that I will ever be able to thank you enough -- but I can do one thing, and that is pledge to *you*, Max, my undying loyalty. If you ever need anything, just call and I will do my utmost to help you."  
  
As if to underscore the miricle that Max had preformed, Kal's stomach growled loudly. Kal blushed and Max laughed.   
  
"Well, first thing that you should do my loyal retainer -- no scratch that retainer crap -- my loyal friend, is fill that empty belly before you rob me of your gracious self by starvation."  
  
Kal laughed as he got to his feet and then he bent over to haul Max up. Companionablely they went down the stairs to eat some ice cream before Max left to go back home. Max had some other bridges to mend. There were some very important people that cared about him and that he cared about in return that deserved some apologies and explanations.  
  
Fin 


End file.
